Nutrition For Diabetics

Finding the right nutritional approach for those living with diabetes can be very challenging, especially with the knowledge that people who are diabetic will often have different reactions to particular types of food than other diabetics.

For the uninitiated, when someone is diabetic, they’re unable to produce or correctly use insulin in their body, which is the hormone that is responsible for transforming sugar, starches and other food into energy. That is why it’s literally a matter of life and death that a diabetic diet is properly followed.

One of the main goals for a diabetic diet is to lower your weight and keep it up. Additionally, the diet is designed to help maintain regular glucose levels in your body. Since diabetes prevents your body from processing glucose the way it should do, a diabetic diet has to, to some extent, perform that maintenance. Moreover, the hope is that a diabetic diet will also help you to keep your blood pressure under control.

The benefits and assistance to your body from the diabetic diet will depend on what type of diabetes you’re trying to treat. Each type has its own challenges and level of restrictions. The important thing to remember, though, is that studies show the effectiveness of a diabetic diet is dependent not so much on the diet itself, but on how well the patient will follow the diet.

Overall, there’s no official diabetic diet to follow and it really depends on the individual. However, there’s a fairly well-defined list of food items that you should avoid. Anything that contains lots of cheese, butter, oil or mayonnaise should be avoided when on diabetic diets. If you must taste these foods during your meal, you should order them to arrive as a side dish.

Other foods that can stray from diabetic diets include those that are prepared with sweet and sour sauce, as well as teriyaki and barbeque sauce. They contain high amounts of sugar and carbohydrates that must be avoided whilst on a diabetic diet.

A few guidelines on how a diabetic can stay healthy for many years to come:

• Count the number of calories from fat as being thirty percent less than the total number of calories eaten throughout one day.

• Include foods which are low in saturated fats and cholesterol, such as skinless poultry, fresh fruit, and vegetables.

• If possible, stay away from red meats, eggs, as well as whole-milk dairy products.

• Make sure that the dairy products in your life comes from low-fat or fat-free selections.

Ten to twenty percent of your daily calories on a diabetic diet should come from proteins in foods, such as lean meat, fish, and low-fat dairy products. The rest of your diabetic diet should consist of carbohydrates coming from whole grains, beans, as well as fresh vegetables and fruit.

 


John Rifkind is a contributing editor at FitnessHealthArticles.com. This article may be reproduced provided that its complete content, links and author byline are kept intact and unchanged. No additional links permitted. Hyperlinks and/or URLs must remain both human clickable and search engine spiderable.